Harry Potter author JK Rowling appears to have criticised the three leading actors of the eight-film franchise in a post on social media.
Rowling was responding to a post that asked: “What actor/actress instantly ruins a movie for you?” She wrote: “Three guesses. Sorry, but that was irresistible,” adding three laughing emojis.
Although the targets of the remark are not explicitly stated, she appears to be referring to Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who played Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley between 2001 and 2011, and with whom Rowling spectacularly fell out in 2020 after she published an essay about surviving sexual assault in which she called arguments about “femaleness not residing in the sexed body … deeply misogynistic and regressive”.
All three actors responded to the essay with statements supportive of trans rights. Radcliffe said: “Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people.” Watson, in a message on social media, said: “Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned.”
Ralph Fiennes, who played Voldemort, subsequently offered support to Rowling in an interview in the Telegraph, saying that “the verbal abuse directed at her is disgusting”, while Helena Bonham Carter, who played Bellatrix Lestrange, told the Times: “It’s been taken to the extreme, the judgmentalism of people. She’s allowed her opinion, particularly if she’s suffered abuse.”
After the publication of the Cass review of gender identity services in 2024, Rowling asserted that she was unlikely to forgive Radcliffe and Watson, claiming they were “celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights”.
In 2024, Radcliffe revealed he had had no direct contact with Rowling since the row erupted.
